Social and health indicators as a measure of access to primary heathcare in Brazil

Abstract

The aim was to investigate the influ- ence of social and health indicators on access to Primary Healthcare in the Belo Horizonte Met- ropolitan Area, Minas Gerais State, Brazil. Sec- ondary data of 34 municipalities were analyzed; the dependent variables were three basic health- care indicators: coverage of the Family Health Strategy; coverage of scheduled first dental appoint- ment and mean annual number of appointments in medical specialties per inhabitant. All indepen- dent variables were analyzed using Principal Com- ponent Analysis, with VARIMAX rotation and Kaiser normalization. Student’s t-test was used to compare the components originated by the factor analysis in relation to the primary care indicators with a significance of 5%. The development con- ditions had significantly greater weight in cities with low FHS coverage (p=0.022). The socioeco- nomic conditions were weighted significantly high- er in municipalities with high dental appoint- ment coverage (p=0.030) and with greater mean number of medical appointments (p=0.022). So- cioeconomic and development conditions may be crucial to the identification of municipalities with the best and worst primary care indicators.